Originally written by Jeremy Garner
While Sweden and Finland are no stranger to the extreme metal community as a whole, I’d venture to say this is primarily because of the insanely well known close ties to their status as purveyors of melodic death metal, however, both countries have an absolute plethora of quality and mind blowing grindcore. And Finland’s most impressive export? By a landslide it’s Rotten Sound.
“Decay” seamlessly picks up where 2005’s phenomenal Exit left of, launching into a calculated delivery of demonic, rancor before launching into an area of intense groove and swelling melodic tension throughout the anthemic, skull bashing “Loss”. Then again the paradigm changes and the music moves into a rapacious burst of no nonsense grindcore courtesy of “Crime” which undoubtedly caputres Rotten Sound’s trademark ability of erupting in an explosion of misanthropy and gusto; with Rotten Sound there’s no such thing as a pulled punch. The intense hyper blast fit “GDP” envelops everything in a decimating wall of sound before lurching straight into a particularly poignant doom laden passage of a purely decimating nature.
The complete surprise comes right around the midpoint of the album in the form of, “CTC”, the first real brooding grindcore instrumental, and to boot, the addition of brooding string arrangements is quite the interesting mix of experimentation that is so needed amongst an oftentimes unilateral genre. The storm has not passed; “Flesh” and “Fear” immediately get down to the business of flesh ripping guitar lines and maniacal blasts hurtling the album in an upward spiral of climactic euphoria before ending in another rabid grindcore anthem “Time.” The whole delivery is a menacingly saturated and bone crushing thickness that belays little to no weakness in the stringet talent in Rotten Sound’s lineup (former drummer Kai Hahto’s replacement on the kit, Sami Latva more than proves himself competent to handle the position).
Yet again the only point of disappointment allowed by Rotten Sound is the album’s duration. If you have any complaints about the shortness of a release this year it should be about this one. Not that Consume To Contaminate doesn’t give a complete picture of their capabilities and a coherent display of their musical ideas, but simply because the brief expanse of fifteen minutes leaves the listener in an insatiable state of begging for more. At the very least they haven’t left enough time since Exit for their brand of vitriolic grindcore assault to fade away into a distant memory. If you have no clue to who or what I’m talking about, do yourself an immense favor and check out this Finish grindcore cyclone.
Now the real dilemma presented by Consume To Contaminate is who has the stronger coup d’état in respect to the grindcore throne, Rotten Sound or Gadget? Wherever you fall on the issue there’s absolutely no doubting the unstoppable path of destruction they have been mercilessly bulldozing for themselves since 2002’s Murderworks. They have paved for themselves a clear cut path of marvelous progression that shows no signs of either hesitation or of weakness.
